Knight's Move (Kirov Series Book 21) Read online

  He looked at his map, his finger tracing along the main road, which ran northwest from the harbor following the Avacha River through Yelzevo to the village of Koryaki. From there, it turned slightly southwest, winding around the massif of Mount Ostraya, and finding a tree-sewn river valley that led to the site of the new airfield at Nachiki. Then it jogged northwest again until it reached the Platnikova River, where it split. One branch went north through the tiny settlement of Malki, the other went south, down through the hunting settlement of Kostogor, following the river southwest to Apacha, and then Lenino Airfield.

  A third report had just come in from the guard outpost at Malki. That incident involved the troublesome local native Koryak tribesmen, and the report indicated a large group of horsemen was coming down that northern branch of the road. Was that what all this fuss was this morning? The Koryak out raiding for food and supplies when the hunting went bad? Yet when he learned none of the other outposts had reported in, he grew more concerned. He turned to an adjutant on his staff, still wondering what was happening.

  “What unit is stationed on the main road northwest of Nachiki?”

  “Sir, we have posted the 67th Machine Canon Company at Dal’niy.”

  “There are trucks there?”

  “Six halftracks, and three motorcycle squads.”

  “Send them to investigate this report at Malni.”

  The order was radioed, the unit unhappy to have to take to their vehicles that grey morning, the cold intense in the mountain valley, and a light snow on the ground. They tramped out, and the halftracks rattled down the road. Fifteen kilometers later, they came to a clearing where it bent towards the river, and Sergeant Kimmoura knew the fork was just ahead.

  * * *

  Zykov heard them first, for he always had good ears in the mountains. Cold as it was, the Russians were in their element now, and moved about with lighthearted energy, glad to be on home turf again. For Sergeant Troyak, the region was very near his birthplace, which was farther north on the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula.

  “What is it?” said Troyak.

  “Vehicles—on the road to the north. Four…. Maybe more. It sounds like tracks.”

  “Tanks?”

  “Possibly, but the engines sound more like trucks. Maybe halftracks.”

  Troyak listened, looking over his shoulder. Most of the platoon was scattered down the road, looking for positions near the bridge. He looked at Zykov. “Bring them up.”

  The corporal nodded, and was off at a run. Thirty yards down the road he caught the eye of Private Gomel, and spun his finger in the air three times before pointing north. That was enough to get the message flashed from one man to another, all the way back to the bridge.

  The men took little time getting up to the edge of the open ground, where Troyak now stood watching the road north, hands on his hips, eyes narrowed, a stony silence about him. The noise of vehicles was very evident now, and the Sergeant slowly turned to his men, a light platoon of five squads.

  “Sniper team, pick your own ground. Koronet team, left to that notch. Mortar team a hundred yards back on the fallen log. Bullpups on either side of the road with a rifle section. Leave the Autogrenade MG stowed. Move!”

  The men were all wearing their arctic whites, and now they moved like ghostly shadows, rushing to positions and swinging their assault rifles off shoulders as they went. Troyak had picked out a good position himself near a stump and boulder, and now he pinched off his collar microphone. His flak jacket was also a short range radio, and he sent a brief message on a secure channel.

  “Grey Wolf One to KA-40. We have contact. Standby.”

  “Affirmative Grey Wolf. Contact reported. We’re ready if needed. Standing by.”

  They saw the first vehicle on the road ahead, and Zykov had been right. It was actually a Type 98 Ho-Hi flack gun chassis, designed to mount a 20mm AA gun. They were few in number, but the Japanese found the tracks gave them good traction on the mountain roads, and this particular vehicle was eventually going to be posted at the new Nachiki Airfield. A second vehicle, just a standard infantry truck, came round the bend about thirty feet behind.

  Troyak pinched off his collar mike again, and spoke one word. “Koronet.”

  * * *

  Back at Brigade Headquarters the reports were now as thick as the heavy sky. Another village in the north reported enemy horsemen, and the cavalry unit at Kostogor south on the road from Troyak’s position indicated they were also under attack. Yet it was the silence that weighed most heavily on General Ozawa, the silence from Lenino Airfield, from Apacha and Malki. No one at those outposts could be raised on the radio, which led him to conclude something more substantial than a tribal raid was now underway. He took the liberty of sending a message to Lt. General Fuzai Tsutsumi at 91st Division HQ, informing him of the difficulties. He was told to do what he had already decided, wait for the weather to clear and send up planes to reconnoiter the entire road.

  Then the radio hut reported the security mountain cavalry detachment at Kostogor was reporting strange aircraft, and what looked like large artillery observation balloons, as was Dal’niy a further 50 kilometers up the road. An alarming picture was developing, but one the General was having real difficulty comprehending. Those were isolated and difficult mountain roads. How could there be so many attacks reported in that terrain, and all at once? The notion that airships and helicopters were leap frogging assault groups forward along the road to clear it for the main body never entered his mind.

  Weather or no weather, he could see a threat on the map now, and took stronger action. “Colonel Azaki!” he shouted at a staff officer. The 14th battalion at Koryaki is to move immediately to Nachiki Airfield. The regimental group at Mitsunami will then move to Koryachi and await further orders.”

  Halfway down the long valley road to Nachiki, the 14th Battalion would run into Troyak and his Marines. They had halted the advance of Sergeant Kimmoura’s 67th Machine Canon Company, blasting his lead vehicles to oblivion and then opening up with the Bullpup MGs and two 82mm Mortars. The sergeant thought he had run into a full battalion, and ordered the vehicles at the back of his column to turn about and head back to Dal’niy. Troyak was soon joined by the local Koryak cavalry militias, and so he took to the helicopters, leaping ahead over a high mountain ridge beyond Nachiki Airfield to take up a new blocking position on the road leading northwest.

  When that report came in by radio, Brigadier Ozawa stopped for a moment. “Yet there are no attacks reported at Nachiki?”

  “No sir, all is quiet there.”

  “Then the enemy must be using these observation balloons to float over the mountain passes and put troops on the ground behind our advancing units.”

  He had suddenly stumbled into the realization of what was actually happening. All his initial responses had been deftly bypassed in this manner, and now his troops were out on the long road to Nachiki like a string of pearls. But what to do? He had already moved one regiment northwest to Koryaki. Should he leave it there, or order it to press on to Nachiki? If there were attacks all along that road, as far as Lenino, then something more substantial was coming at him. Of course? How else could this port be attacked? The enemy certainly could not come here by sea, and so they were coming on the one road that would take them to Petropavlovsk, to Kazantochi, the land of volcanoes.

  He briefly considered moving that regiment down the valley road to Nachiki. I am here to protect the ports and airfields, he thought. It appears that the enemy has already taken the landing strips at Lenino. Nachiki may be indefensible. They are already behind it with these balloons! So I will defend my primary assets here.

  Now he looked to find Colonel Azaki again, but the man had already run off to convey his earlier orders. Cursing, he grabbed a Sergeant. “Go find the Colonel and tell him those last orders are hereby cancelled. The regimental group will wait at Koryaki as ordered, but the 14th Independent Battalion must return there at once.”

  So w
hen Troyak and his Marines opened up on that battalion, realizing they were going to have a good fight on their hands, they were surprised when the enemy quietly fell back, then started withdrawing back up the road.

  “I don’t think they like us,” said Zykov.

  “What have you been eating?” said Komilov. “They can probably smell you way up here!”

  Troyak said nothing, watching the Japanese infantry pull back with good discipline and then listening as the sound of their vehicles rumbled on the road below his position. He could see immediately what was happening.

  “They’re pulling out,” he said in a low voice. “Notify home base. Enemy consolidating at Point Bravo. Proceeding to Sorka as planned.”

  Point Bravo was Koryaki up ahead, where the road winding around the mountainous bulk of Gora Ostraya finally reached the river that ran through that town and down to Petropavlovsk. That was where they were going to try and make a stand, and Mount Sorka to the northwest of that position was his next objective. They were going to flank the Japanese defense before they could even get it established.

  At Troyak’s signal, the noisome dark shape of the KA-40 soon appeared overhead, landing in a small clearing. His squads boarded and the helo climbed into the grey sky, heading northwest towards the looming stone shadow of Mount Sorka.

  Part VI

  Shadows of Things To Come

  “Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals. And so one sees shadow ever retreat to hidden places, only to return in the wake of the war between dark and light.”

  ― Stephen Erikson, House of Chains

  Chapter 16

  Armed and well fueled, Kapitan Heinrich turned south, following in the shadow of Germany’s most successful commerce raiders, and thinking he had every chance of taking that honor and title for his own ship. He had now sunk eleven ships and 68,413 tons, but he had a very long way to go. The wolf in sheep’s clothing, raider Pinguin, still held the record, sinking, capturing, or mining 28 ships totaling 154,710 gross registered tons. Atlantis had come close to taking the crown away, killing or capturing 22 ships totaling 144,384 tons, a most impressive feat in her amazing 602 day odyssey.

  All told, in Fedorov’s history, the German commerce raiders would sink 800,611 tons in WWII, far more than all German and Japanese warships combined, which managed only 324,932 tons. Both Atlantis and Pinguin died under the guns of British cruisers, but that would not be the case for Kaiser Wilhelm, thought Heinrich.

  I’ve got my Iron Cross for sinking Gloucester, but now I want my Oak Leaves, and more tonnage. Rösselsprung has only just begun. My orders are to head for the Indian Ocean and interdict the sea lanes. But before I go there I will make a few unexpected ports of call. The British have several isolated island outposts on our present course, one at Ascension Island, and another at Saint Helena….

  Ascension Island Base was administered by the British Cable and Wireless Company, part of the infrastructure for the trans-Atlantic cables. Now it was also the location of a “Huff Duff” station established in 1939. That was slang for HF/DF, or High Frequency Direction Finding. It was a means of snooping on the high frequency radio signals between Germany and her far flung U-Boats, particularly when they transmitted signals home. Admiral Raeder wanted the base put out of action, in spite of the risks that mission entailed.

  The Americans would come and build a useful airstrip there, dubbed Wideawake Field, and some Aviation Engineers were already there. Nobody got much sleep on the island, for it was a favorite roosting place for the Snooty Tern, a bird that was infamous for its incessant, noisome calls. The Hawaiians even named the birds “ewa ewa,” which meant cacophony, so the airfield was well named, as its service crews were too often wide awake at night with all that noise. The project was still in the planning stage, but it would soon see squadrons of Aircobra fighters and B-24 bombers arriving to transform the island into a vital airfield.

  Now, in early 1942, the birds were there, but not the planes. The island was the remnant of an extinct volcano, its surface pot marked by small peaks and calderas, one in the shape of a horseshoe that had been called the Devil’s Riding School. The 35 square miles of rock had but a single lonesome tree, called “the forest,” and it was home to little more than a colony of hawksbill turtles, the terns, 170 hardy residents, and a modest collection of Navy and RAF personnel at the small settlement of Georgetown on the northwest coast. They manned the small Huff Duff station, and a weather post up on a 600 meter hill near a place known as “Devil’s Cauldron” on the east coast of the island. It seemed like it would be an easy kill for Kaiser Wilhelm, except for one thing—HMS Hood was there—at least a couple of her teeth, if not the ship itself.

  In 1935, the venerable battlecruiser underwent a refit to downsize her secondary armament from 5.5-inch guns to the dual purpose 4-inch guns that could also serve to bolster her AA defense. Two of her old 5.5 inchers, serial numbers 56 and 78, were freighted down to Ascension Island, where they were installed at Fort Bedford, Cross Hill, overlooking Georgetown. There they stood like stolid square blocks of stone, along with a pair of old Victorian era cannon that had once kept that same watch in earlier times.

  Just a few weeks ago, the German U-124 was out on her seventh patrol and was caught on the surface by the British light cruiser Dunedin. That might have been a death sentence for the German boat, but they fired a pair of torpedoes at very long range that got lucky that day. Both torpedoes struck home, and Dunedin went down in just 17 minutes. Emboldened by this success, U-124 approached Ascension Island, whereupon those 5.5-inch guns from HMS Hood gave the Germans a very cold welcome. Raeder wanted the shore batteries put out of action, and now he had the means of settling the matter in Kaiser Wilhelm.

  The winds were howling that day, as they often were, sounding like the disembodied wails of lost souls that had been shipwrecked there over the decades, their bones still buried in the stony sand and gravel of “Deadman’s Beach.” In spite of the wind, it was “Summer” on Ascension, for the island’s warmest months were December and January.

  Kaiser Wilhelm had come south like a grey shadow, with the Goeben skillfully flying off recon patrols to spot enemy shipping and allow the task force to avoid detection. They would feast later, but now they had business with the British outpost on Ascension. Heinrich had planned to stand off out of range of those 5.5-inch guns and let his 15-inchers do the work, but the visibility from the ship at the required ranges was not good enough to allow Schirmer to spot his target.

  Marco Ritter had been up to have a look, and landed on the Goeben after a brief patrol. “The island itself is in the clear,” he said “but there is a circle of clouds all around the damn thing.” He looked for his protégé, Hans Rudel, now become somewhat of a living legend aboard the ship for his dive bombing skills.

  “Look, Hans, I think you can get up there and do the job easily enough. Take two 500 pounders, one under each wing.”

  Ritter sold Kapitan Falkenrath on the idea, and the Goeben closed up to flash lamp signals to the task force CO, as they were observing strict radio silence as they crept up on the island. Some minutes later, the lamps on the high mainmast of Kaiser Wilhelm signaled back—proceed as planned. The Goeben winked farewell, and then slipped off to find some open sea. Half an hour later Hans Rudel was in the air.

  “I could hit a tank on the ground nine times out of ten,” Rudel had once boasted, and it was really no brag. “Those gun batteries will be much bigger. I’ll get them both.”

  Marco Ritter wanted to come along, so the two of them went up, climbing up through the low clouds to find the island. He was soon looking down on the dirty black peaks of the volcanic cones, with flows of grey ash and red soil staining the flanks of the highlands. Only in the center was there any spot of green, the well named Green Mountain, with its thick vegetation growing from the rich volcanic soil and watered by ceaseless rainfall. Aside from that one spot, Ritter and Rudel could have been
flying over a base on Mars from the look of the place. Its austere, barren landscape seemed almost otherworldly.

  As they came in, Rudel spotted signs of human habitation and life, the tall white spire of St. Mary’s Church in Georgetown, built in 1843. Above it was the dull reddish brown height of Cross Point, and he had little trouble spotting those guns. He looked over his shoulder, seeing Marco Ritter waggle his wings to wish him good luck, but just smiled. I won’t need it, he thought. Luck is for those too short on skill to get the job done. I’ll hit those guns with no trouble at all.

  When his Stuka came screaming down from above, it was a severe shock to everyone who saw or heard it. The sound of the Jericho trumpet sent hundreds of Scooby Terns skyward in a chaotic swarm, and then the first bomb came whistling down, right on target. The second dive would get the other gun, just as Rudel promised.

  Not wanting to remain idle, Ritter took his fighter down, swooping around the horseshoe caldera of the Devil’s Riding School, past the Dark Crater and then strafing a group of trucks and personnel that were out beginning survey work for the airfield. The sudden attack, signaling the presence of German ships nearby, was quite a shock. Soon the airwaves were alive with signals, and Kapitan Heinrich smiled as his B-Dienst Operators picked up the frantic traffic.

  “It seems we’ve shaken up more than a few birds,” he said to Jung with a grin. “Very well, now it’s time we were gone. There’s nothing more to be done here. Play out your ruse.”

  As their presence was already known to the enemy, he instructed his signals team to send a message home indicating the assigned target was destroyed and the ship was heading home to Gibraltar. If the enemy decryption teams were as good as his own men, he would see what the British did with that little tidbit.